In September 2011, DC Comics hit the reset button on their whole universe, resulting in, among other changes, a massive realignment of one of its lynchpins, the much-revered Justice League. JL is one of the longest-running comics of all time, existing in one state or another since 1960; with the reset (dubbed "The New 52" after the fifty-two comic lines relaunched), DC created offshoot Justice League International, wherein a UN-controlled team dispensed ass-kicking care packages to villains worldwide.

I recently played Halo 4 with two people who had never
played any Halo games before. I summarized the series as best I could, but I
ran into a speed bump when they asked me to clarify the nature
of Master Chief and Cortana's relationship.

After I stuttered some insufficient explanations, one of them asked, "Is it a Tinkerbell fetish?"

You might not know it, but Br1ght
Pr1mate are the most interesting band in the chiptune scene right now.
They've accomplished this in the most boring way possible - by releasing Night Animals, a conventionally great
album.

An album, of all things! At a time when such banal things as
albums are dying slowly.

Here's your moment of glam zen for the day: For irrefutable proof of why Videodrome Discothèque clinched our Best Dance Night category in 2012, look no further than this bazonkers photo set, taken from their sparkles-and-spandex-sheathed tribute to the best-worst roller-disco opera ever made.

Hotline
Miami,
an indie top-down
shooter PC game by Dennaton Games that came out in October and found
its way onto many a Best Games of 2012 list (including the
Phoenix's),
has a twist ending that you have seen before. You have seen it in
Fight Club,
and in the first Call of Duty:Black Ops
game. In some ways, you have felt it shake you to your core in every
game that asks you to kill someone.

Stephen King knows as much as anyone really can know about the
power fear has over people. In terms of politics, fear is an incredible weapon
since it can't -- unlike the fictional fear he deals in -- be placed under what
the 65-year-old author calls a "glass lid." This fear, especially the fear of
the other, was on King's mind when I spoke with him by telephone before
Thanksgiving ahead of his December 7 appearance at UMass Lowell

As I watched advertisements for Lollipop
Chainsaw and, eventually, as I reviewed the game, I couldn't help but imagine a
few improvements. The game's juxtaposition of classic tropes of femininity
(sparkles and flouncy ruffled skirts) with hardcore horror (zombies and
chainsaw-induced blood spatter) caught my attention, but the game fell short in
a few areas.

You won't find too many Hollywood
action heroes continuing to kick ass when they're almost in their 70s. You'll
find even fewer who would survive being fed into a meat grinder by murderous
intergalactic scumdogs - actually, there's only one actor we can think of who
fits that bill, and that's Danny Trejo. A few weeks back, we caught up with
this career badass (and frequent Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino
collaborator) at the Rock & Shock horror convention in Worcester.

Great
music often comes from great literature. Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aneas. based on Virgil's Aeneid, is one example. Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Welcome to the Pleasuredome, inspired by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," is another. Jaggery's latest release, Private Violence, carries on the
tradition with a collection of songs Mali Sastri wrote after reading Truman
Capote's In Cold Blood

Neal
DeConte's workspace is littered with body parts. A self-taught
practitioner of his grisly art, DeConte had long been fascinated with
grafting together disembodied limbs and torsos, but now it's a full-time
occupation for him. He blames it on the Pit Witch from Army of Darkness, he states in this interview in From Dusk 'Til Con

This past Saturday, 2000+ registered attendees, 30+ digital
game showcases and 10+ tabletop game showcases graced MIT's campus for the
first ever BostonFestivalofIndieGames. It
was the first big event put together by the local indie game development
community, one that showed off Boston as a hub for game artists, designers and
programmers, many of whom work in two- or three-man studios.

If you like J. R. R. Tolkien's high fantasy legendarium, you
can put one ring on it. But why even bother introducing The Hobbit? This is Laser Orgy. You read the books before there
were movies, you watched the movies before the newest movie, and, by the beard
of Tom Bombadil, you bow to no one. (Unless it's Viggo Mortensen in a towel.

The Microsoft NERD Center just hosted the fifth
annual iteration of GameLoop, a gathering for game developers run by Darius
Kazemi and Scott MacMillan, on August 18th, 2012. It's an un-conference, which
means all attendees can raise their hands and pitch dozens of panels at an
opening meeting. Then, everyone votes for the panels they'd most like to
attend.